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the Oregonian

The following article mentions sexual assault and murder and may be disturbing to some readers.

Last week, the Oregonian debuted Ghosts of Highway 20, an engrossing five-part documentary series directed by Dave Killen that investigates the crimes of state highway mechanic John Ackroyd, a previously unknown serial killer who murdered at least four women—Kaye Turner, Rachanda Pickle, Melissa Sanders, and Sheila Swanson—and brutally raped another, Marlene Gabrielsen, along that stretch of road between 1977 and 1992.

I'd never heard of Ackroyd before watching Ghosts of Highway 20, but he joins a fairly long list of serial killers who've roamed the Pacific Northwest, like Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway ("the Green River Killer"), and Dayton Leroy Rogers ("the Molalla Forest Killer"). All of the women Ackroyd preyed upon were young and vulnerable: Turner was out running in the woods by herself; Pickle, his teenage stepdaughter, was home alone; Sanders and Swanson were hitchhiking home from the coast; and Gabrielsen was a new mother looking for a ride home to her baby after a night out with her husband and friends.

Ackroyd was finally arrested 14 years after what's believed to be his first killing, the 1978 murder of Turner. But according to the series, investigators always suspected he was also responsible for Pickle's disappearance, along with the murders of Sanders and Swanson. (They think he could've been tied to five unsolved murders that occurred along Highway 20 as well.) Ackroyd died at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem in late 2016 before he could be tried in the disappearance of Pickle and deaths of Sanders and Swanson.

Even if you aren't a true-crime buff, there are several reasons why you should absolutely watch Ghosts of Highway 20: The series takes its title and theme song from Lucinda Williams' 2016 album of the same name, setting the mood with hauntingly appropriate lyrics (though her ghosts belong to a different Highway 20); its drone footage of Oregon's forests is a thing of eerie beauty; Noelle Crombie's reporting is outstandingly thorough and thoughtful; and the interviews she conducts reveal the emotional scars of those affected by Ackroyd's crimes, like Sheila Swanson's brother, who says he's returned to the spot where his sister's body was found close to 100 times. But the series also reveals the incredible resilience of Gabrielsen, who grew up as a member of the Inupiaq people in Alaska and was Ackroyd's first and only surviving victim.


Ghosts of Highway 20's drone footage of Oregon's forests is a thing of eerie beauty; Noelle Crombie's reporting is outstandingly thorough and thoughtful.


There was physical evidence corroborating Gabrielsen's account of the rape, and she went to the hospital to get a forensic evidence exam immediately after the assault, but the police were still skeptical of her account. When she and Ackroyd both agreed to take a polygraph test, he passed, and she failed. But lie detector tests aren't foolproof measurements of honesty, since there aren't specific physiological responses associated with lying; a 2016 study even found that habitual liars' brains can be desensitized and might not have automatic responses.

Gabrielsen did everything she could to prevent Ackroyd from hurting more women, but he wasn't seriously investigated until he hurt a white woman. Ghosts of Highway 20 runs a thread through the serial killer's heinous crimes, but it also exposes a brutal combination of systemic sexism and racism that's likely what allowed Ackroyd to continue terrorizing women for two decades after his violent tendencies first came to light.

"They made me feel like a smelly, drunken Native," Gabrielsen says of her interactions with police. "So I just shrank... if they only would've listened to me, it could all have been avoided. All of it."